yum annoyances

[Jeff Spaleta]

On 12/6/05, Matthew Miller <mattdm at mattdm.org> wrote:
> Also, the obsoletes tags in such a package would need to precise, so they
> match the version-release of the latest Core/Extras package but not beyond
> that, so that there wouldn't be a problem with other repos providing the
> same package.

I think you missed my point.  Is it appropriate to make functionality
"disappear" on a client system via update packages that serve no
purpose other than to obsolete other packages?
Package foo in core provides /usr/bin/foo which can be scripted in
bash scripts. Core decides to remove package foo in fc5 and it has not
been added to Extras yet. The foo package from fc4 has no unfullfilled
deps which prevent it from installing and running on an fc5 system.
Why should an fc4 user who is relying on the functionality provided by
package foo be forced to remove that package via the payload-less
obsoletes package? We aren't talking about packages that have changed
names or sub-packages that have been re-structured. We are talking
about packages that have no functional replacement yet in the
available Fedora repos. Why should an update/upgrade force the removal
of such packages and functionality on client systems?  Isn't this
situation a case-by-case determination for the local admin?

-jef